Hello all.

I was wondering if it is possible to append a string to the beginning of a flat file. I have a process where I am creating a flat file based on the number of records. The header record (which is what I need to write) has a field called Number of Records which is basically the number of lines in the file. The problem is that this file is 3 tiered with a W10 record that can have multiple W20 records that may or may not have W30 records. So I won't really know how many records our on the file until the end.

Thanks

I have a chunk of code, used to delete a line from a file, that could be modified to suit your needs. I pulled it from a db called Neatcode, don't remember the source. Here is the code.



HTH
Ken

There's really two way to do it: either do all your pre-processing first, and then print the entire file, or print the file with a dummy line, which you'll then replace with the real value.

You could probably do the calculations for each record, and instead of printing it out to the file, just save it as an array. When you're done calculating, the number of items in the array is the number of records, then you can just print everything out at that point.

If you're not too familiar with arrays, you might just want to try the double-print way. Have a counter variable while you're writing it out normally, so you know how many records you'll have at the end, and just put a "Record count: XXX" where you should have the record count in the file. Then, you can adapt khaos' code to re-read the file, changing only that record count line.